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Sabrina Butler

Mr Pace

Honors Literature and Composition

3/12/23

War Story Genre Comparative Essay

The genre of war story is a type of literature that demonstrates the causes, effects, and acts of war

such as economics, government, and the people involved and affected by war both abroad and at

home. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut utilizes the war story genre by

following the character Billy Pilgrim on his time-traveling experiences, many of which revisit his

war memories. The short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien also uses the war

story genre; it takes place during the Vietnam war and focuses on protagonist Lieutenant Jimmy

Cross with his experiences of facing death and missing his college lover. The novel

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim

O’Brien use the genre of war story to illustrate the psychological and emotional impact war has

on soldiers and work to break the misconceptions of war being glorious. While they both

demonstrate the negative effects of war, they differ in how the protagonists of each story react to

the psychological hardships that come with fighting.

Across both stories, there was a common theme of psychological damage during the war.

The protagonists of each story used escapism to find mental refuge during traumatic moments in

battle. In the short story, “The Things They Carried”, protagonist Lieutenant Jimmy Cross often

found himself anywhere but in the war, “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his

attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep

their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot
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along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing” (Obrien, 5). As highlighted in this

passage, Jimmy often likes to envision an alternate experience to the one he endures in the

moment. He finds solace through imagining himself somewhere pleasant, with the person he

loves: Martha. These feelings of longing represent the burden that many soldiers carry; all of

them miss their loved ones and the comfort of home. When times are desperate, the mind can

find incredibly creative ways of coping, and escapism is one of them. Similarly, the protagonist

of Slaughterhouse-Five resorted to the psychological coping mechanism of escapism. As a part

of Billy’s PTSD, when he relives his war experiences, he often finds himself suddenly traveling -

escaping - to another moment in his life. Billy was on the frontlines during the infamous Battle

of the Bulge of December 1944 when he first time traveled, “Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the

forest. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. His head was tilted back and his

nostrils were flaring. He was like a poet n the Parthenon. This is when Billy first came unstuck in

time. His attention began to swirl grandly through the full arc of his life passing into death which

was violet light” (Vonnegut, 43). The physical transportation of his mind and body to various

periods throughout his life emphasizes the severity of psychological damage his brain suffered.

First, he created a false narrative of reality to justify time traveling; and second, he used this

mental ability to process and cope the traumatic experiences he faced in the war. When his war

memories rose to a climax, he would simply travel to another time and place. Both Lieutenant

Jimmy and soldier Billy find it hard to stay present in the war and involuntarily slip away into

the depths of their imagination. In “The Things They Carried” Lieutenant Jimmy is physically IN

the war and escaping reality through memories of his past life, inspired by the letters and pictures

he carries from Martha. However, in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy has already been through war

and is experiencing it through PTSD, which explains why he is time-traveling through different
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points of the war. Each story works to capture the chaotic nature of slipping in and out of reality

and show the audience the extremities these characters went to in order to cope with war trauma.

The characters’ shared experiences of escapism, despite one being present in war, and the other

reliving the war, highlights that psychological damage effect people both during and after war.

Overall, “The Things They Carried” and Slaughterhouse-Five utilize the war story genre in a

similar way by illustrating the psychological impact it has on soldiers, specifically through the

usage of coping mechanisms such as escapism. Together, they effectively disprove the myth that

war is glorious.

Although both stories utilize the war story genre in a similar way regarding the theme of

psychological damage, there are also notable differences in the way that the protagonists from

each story handle tragedies during the war, such as death. Death is a common occurance in war,

and each story illustrates different responses to such misfortunes. After seeing one of his

soldiers, Ted Lavender, get shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe, Lieutenant Jimmy

Cross was overcome with guilt and sorrow. He and his comrades dug Lavender a grave and the

sadness never seemed to cease, “All he could do was dig. He used his entrenching tool like an

ax, slashing, feeling both love and hate, and then later, when it was fully dark, he sat at the

bottom of his foxhole and wept. It went on for a long while” (O’Brien, 9). Lieutenant Jimmy’s

emotional reaction to death shows the humanistic side of war. At the end of the day, a person lost

their life and will not be able to return home to their family. More than anything, Ted Lavender

was one of his brothers, they fought side by side for months on end, so to see him go is

incredibly disheartening. This short story effectively captures the emotional response to

hardships in war, his weeping reminds the readers that soldiers are humans, not robots, and that

they have feelings, too. Although, there seems to be a point where soldiers become emotionally
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numb after being exposed to so much death. In Slaughterhosue-Five, Billy Pilgrim has found a

way to cope with the magnitude of death by using the philosophy of his self-created,

extraterrestrial civilization called the Tralfamadorians, “Now, when I myself hear that somebody

is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it

goes” (Vonnegut, 27). The phrase “so it goes” is used after every death throughout the novel and

it functions to downplay the tragicness of death. Billy’s indifference to death shows that war

desensitizes people to death because it occurs so frequently each day. Death has an immense

impact on one's psychological state, and in Billy’s case, he coped with it by attaching himself to

a belief that a dead person is still alive and well in other moments of their life. This philosophy

was a way for Billy to face the death he encountered and bring some peace to mind, since it truly

holds no silver lining. “The Things They Carried” and Slaughterhouse-Five highlight two

different reactions to death, one being emotion-filled, and another being emotionless. Since

Lieutenant Jimmy is experiencing war in real-time, this might explain the potency of his grief

because the emotional wound is fresh, whereas Billy Pilgrim is many years out of the war and

reflecting on the total amount of death he saw. With time, and as a means to find closure for the

emotional trauma he endured, he uses the comforting Tralfamadorian philosophy about human

death. While the two stories provide a different take on the psychological and emotional impact

death has on soldiers, each perspective conveys the grueling psychological damage that results

from the war experience as a whole.

The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and the short story “The Things They

Carried” by Tim O’Brien use the genre of war story to illustrate the psychological and emotional

impact war has on soldiers. While the protagonists from each story cope with their experiences

through escapism, they also display different emotional responses to death - one being highly
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emotional, another being emotionally numb. Altogether, these war story books tie nonlinearity,

chaoticness, and trauma cohesively in order to inform the audience of the full impact of war.

While the damage from war can not be reversed, the country can work to spread awareness of

PTSD and provide mental health aid to those who survived.

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Works Cited

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. Origami Express, 2007.

O’Brien, Tim. “Cengage: Digital Course Solutions & Online Textbooks – Cengage.” The Vintage

Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, Vintage Books, 1994,

https://www.cengage.com/custom/static_content/OLC/s76656_76218lf/obrien.pdf.